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Steve’s in the gym the first time it happens.
“Gym” is, to be honest, a generous description for what is really just a basement with a couple of sets of weights, some hastily installed padding, and a punching bag that Steve has been strictly forbidden from using on account of the way he “goes through punching bags like Game of Thrones goes through characters.”
He’s also alone.
Sam put an end to their sparring session not fifteen minutes before, pushing himself up off the mat and ignoring Steve’s outstretched hand.
“Yeah, I’m done for the day. If you need me, I’ll be crying over the mortal remains of my ego.”
Clint, who had opted to watch from the sidelines (Steve had invited him to join, but “I’m just here for the schadenfreude,” he’d said), came forward, clapping Sam companionably on the back. “We’ll give it a proper wake. I know for a fact Scott’s got a few bottles of the good stuff shrunk away where he thinks no one’ll find them. You in, Cap?”
“No, you go ahead,” Steve said, which as it turns out was just as well.
He still hasn’t told the team about the flip phone, or the promise he’d sent along with it.
If you need us, if you need me, I’ll be there.
He’s not really sure why he’s kept it a secret.
It’s a question he thinks about sometimes. He’ll catch the frozen look on Wanda’s face whenever Tony or the Vision are mentioned on the news, or pass by a closed door and catch snatches of a call never meant for his ears (baby, I miss you, I love you, I’m sorry), and feel the flip phone grow warm in his pocket, feel the pleasure-pain heat of the secret where it presses against his thigh, and he’ll wonder. Just for a moment, he’ll wonder, and then he’ll shake his head and redirect his mind to more pressing matters. It’s not like the phone, secret or otherwise, is likely to be an issue. Tony won’t call.
It’s a fact to which he’s long since resigned himself. Sending the phone was as much a gesture as anything else. Tony is, by and large, too competent to require much help, and too damn proud to ask for it when he does. The memory of the Mandarin still burns hotly in Steve’s mind, and he and Tony were very nearly friends then. Now… Well. Easiest just to say that Tony isn’t going to call and leave it at that.
That’s not why he hasn’t told, though.
He wonders when exactly it started, all these insidious creeping whys, all these questions he can’t quite bring himself to answer. Why he hasn’t told his team about the phone. Why he carries it with him everywhere he goes, from undercover missions to showers back at the hideout.
Why in times of stress he finds his hand drawn to the pouch or pocket where the flip phone lies, seeking out its weight and talismanic presence.
That’s all it can be, anyway. He knows that. A talisman. A symbol. A remembrance. A ghost.
Tony isn’t going to call.
It’s twenty-three hundred hours.
Steve is alone in the gym.
The phone—
The phone is ringing.
“Widow’s in the wind.”
The words, cutting across Steve’s urgent query (“Tony, what—”), are spoken in a brusque, unfamiliar tone, but the voice—
The voice is anything but.
Steve is no stranger to having the wind knocked out of him—has, in his day, become intimately acquainted with the floor of many a Brooklyn alley as he struggled and gasped like a landed fish. He remembers it with undiminished clarity, the starburst shock of the blow, the heave of lungs desperate for air, the way the sudden rush of oxygen would crash into the ache beneath his ribs, how the resulting shockwave of relief and pain whited out the world.
That’s what it feels like hearing Tony’s voice again after all these months.
“What happened?” he hears himself say, and marvels a little at the steadiness of his voice, the irrepressible note of command.
“You did, Cap. You and your dead-eyed murder-cyborg of a BFF. Natasha’s been charged with willful misconduct, dereliction of duty, aiding and abetting—you name it. Not treason, since technically the Accords fall under international jurisdiction, but I think Ross is working his way round to it. Where there’s a will and all that.”
Steve shuts his eyes, mind racing. It’s been nearly five months since Leipzig, and not a whisper of Natasha in the news, except for the occasional UN-sanctioned operation. He thought—hoped that that meant she was safe. He should have known better. Natasha wasn’t safe. None of them are. That’s what the Accords mean. The Accords have dragged them all down, in the end.
All except Tony, he thinks with a pulse of the old resentment. Then he thinks of Tony on a battlefield never meant for battle, the anger in his voice almost like a plea: “I’m trying to keep you from tearing the Avengers apart!” And then, halfway across the world, voice shattered with determination and defeat as he prepared to kill an innocent man, to do with his own hands what so many of his weapons had done—what he’d already dedicated his life to atoning for: “I don’t care. He killed my mom.”
No, the Accords spared no one. In some ways, Tony least of all.
“How long until this goes public?”
“Oh, they’re keeping it on the DL for now.” Tony’s drawl sends hairs pricking up the back of Steve’s neck. “Don’t want the bad press—not only did the Accords turn America’s golden boy into an internationally wanted criminal, but now they’re making defectors re-defect? But just because they’re keeping quiet about it doesn’t mean they’re not looking.”
Steve nods. So Natasha’s on the run—
Because of you, sings a nasty little voice at the back of his head. Steve ignores it. He won’t disrespect Natasha by feeling guilty over a choice she made of her own volition and judgement.
Natasha’s on the run and Tony’s telling him… why?
“She tell you where she was headed?”
Tony laughs shortly. “We’re not exactly on what you might call speaking terms.”
Steve pushes back against another swell of guilt, a guilt that has nothing to do with Natasha and Tony’s relationship—the two of them have never gotten along, not so long as Steve has known them—and everything to do with the prick of satisfaction—hot, sharp, and ugly—that follows Tony’s words.
His fingers tighten around the phone so the casing creaks in protest.
“I’ve got a pretty good guess though,” Tony is saying, words curling with a half-ironic significance.
Steve nods. So that’s it. If anyone can track down Steve and his team without tipping off the coalition forces, it’s Natasha. Still, their odds are a hell of a lot better if Steve’s already on the alert.
He feels a twinge of gratitude, and doesn’t know how to feel about that at all.
“It would be nice,” he offers, “to see Nat again.”
Tony makes a sound, and for a moment Steve wonders if he’s wearing the suit, because there’s so much of the mechanical in that noise—the hiss of pistons and the growl of engines.
“Oh yeah,” he says. “A lovely little family reunion. Just like old times.”
Steve feels the bitterness in Tony’s voice like a physical ache.
“Tony,” he begins, because he didn’t mean it like that—
“Don’t call me that,” Tony snaps, and there’s that vision-greying muddle again, relief and pain, because he’s not trying to hurt Tony, but it feels… it feels good, in a terrible kind of way, to know that he can.
“Is there something else you’d rather me call you?”
“Is there—? No, Captain Tactful, there’s nothing I’d rather you call me. I’d prefer you not to call me at all.”
Steve stiffens at the sudden rush of—surely disproportionate—anger in Tony’s voice. He swallows around the argument already rising in his throat.
You called me.
“God, this was a stupid idea. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. Mark it down to a fit of temporary insanity. Too much lead in the water supply, maybe. I’ll have FRIDAY get the plumbers—” Steve hears a distant, tiny ring, and Tony breaks off, cursing.
“Tony—”
“Well, would you look at that? It’s the Secretary of State on the other line, and here’s me shooting the breeze with a wanted war criminal. What a life I do lead.”
“I just want—”
“Sorry, Cap, it’s been a blast, for a given value of ‘blast,’ but I’ve got to jet. Duty calls, etc. etc. You remember duty, right?”
There’s a click, and then, after a moment, the dial tone hums in Steve’s ear. Slowly, he lowers his hand from his ear, staring down at the piece of lifeless plastic that just a moment ago was speaking to him with Tony’s voice.
I wanted to say thank you, he thinks, curling his fingers inwards until the phone snaps shut.
That’s the first time.
He dreams he’s back at Clint’s farm, staring at Tony across two heaps of split wood. Tony’s in his armor, less his helmet, and he’s not arguing with Steve—he’s not saying anything at all, just staring at him with that look of challenge and defiance. Steve steps forward, puts a hand on either shoulder, and rips the armor off his body. It parts right down the middle, as if by design, and falls to either side, an empty metal husk.
They’re in the bunker now, and he’s crowding Tony up against the wall. It’s easy to forget how much smaller than him Tony really is. He’s so damn vulnerable like this, wide-eyed and panting as Steve pushes him up on his toes, grinding his hips again Tony’s stomach, face buried in his neck, “let me let me let me let me—”
A sudden yell sends him jolting into wakefulness. Steve sits bolt upright, looking for the source of the disturbance, but from the hallway, clear as anything, Clint’s voice—
“Sorry. Didn’t see you there.”
“Jesus, man,” and that’s Sam, sounding a little breathless but neither hurt nor particularly alarmed, “you scared the ever-loving shit right out of me.”
Steve tunes out the rest of the conversation. He’s got more pressing matters on his mind, like the fact that he’s now wide-awake and so desperately aroused that he aches with it. Just the brush of his pajamas against his bare skin is nearly enough to drive him out of his mind, and—
Tony, he thinks, and damns himself for a fool.
He retreats to the shower, drowns himself in heat and steam until he can no longer tell whether what he’s feeling comes from the water on his skin, or the hand working his cock, or the jumbled dream-memory of a faraway battlefield.
“Well, would you look at that? America’s golden boy,” Tony sneers as his defenses part under Steve’s urgent hands. “What a lovely little reunion. Just like old times.” His voice sounds like it did only hours before—crackling with distance, colored by an imperfect connection, but his body is real and present and—
“Tony,” Steve grunts, pushing him back against the wall, licking and biting his way up the other man’s neck, “Tony, Tony,” as callused fingers work themselves through his hair, as a static-roughened voice breathes into his ear:
“There’s nothing I’d rather you call me.”
He comes with Tony’s name on his lips like he’s mouthing a prayer, the world winking out in a flash of white-hot pleasure. Steve slumps back against the wall of the shower, panting. The flow of the water carves rivulets in the mess on his hand, sending the evidence of his lapse swirling down the drain.
Words appear in his mind—plain, definite, emotionless, like the answer in a catechism, something learned by rote.
This is wrong.
It’s several long moments before he can remember why.
The second time the phone rings, Steve almost doesn’t hear it.
This is because, at the time, he’s in bed, his fingers wrapped around his leaking cock and his face turned into his shoulder to muffle the sound of his groans.
He’s got Tony up against the wall, the Iron Man armor a heap of gleaming rubble beneath his feet. A forearm against Tony’s chest pins him in place as Steve sucks proprietary bruises into his neck, and even in his fantasies he’s so damn careful, leaning in with just enough pressure to make the other man feel it, never enough to crush or wound. His hand is wrapped across Tony’s mouth, an upgrade on the original dream. He’s been finding fantasy-Tony’s continued silences more and more unsettling, and it helps to imagine a reason for them.
He jerks Tony with his spare hand, firm but slow as Tony thrashes and bucks his hips. Steve tries not to remember the words his dream-self murmured into Tony’s skin, all those filthy things, because it’s wrong, wrong to think like this about Tony at all but especially wrong to think
(“Look at you, look how badly you need this,” his dream-self panted, almost in wonder. “God, you’re desperate for it, no wonder you’re such a slut.”)
Steve grunts and bites the meat of his own shoulder. The pain is enough to push his thoughts back on course—forget the dream, forget what you said, just think of Tony, Tony—
his chest heaving with little hitching breaths, mouth opening wide beneath Steve’s hand, trying to suck Steve’s fingers into his mouth. He imagines thumbing the head of Tony’s cock, fingernail dragging across the slit, imagines Tony crying out beneath him, head back, neck arched as Steve licks his way up one of those straining tendons…
Tony is close—he must be. What a mess he’ll make, all over his own stomach and Steve’s hand, and nothing here to clean him with. Maybe Tony will let Steve finish on his stomach too. Steve imagines picking up one of Tony’s hands and dragging it through that warm mess, stirring Steve’s come and his own like an artist mixing paints.
“Lick your hand clean,” Steve would say, and Tony would.
Maybe Tony would put the armor back on like that—maybe he’d fly all the way home wearing nothing beneath the armor but their mingled come. Maybe— Steve swallows. Maybe he’d even fight like that, naked, filthy, marked, and no one the wiser but the two of them. Maybe, if Steve asked—
It takes him a moment or two to process the sound of the ringtone. When he does, he just about vaults out of bed. His hands are damp, and he nearly drops the phone twice before managing to open it and bring it to his ear.
“Tony,” he says, “what—”
“You need to go.”
Steve ignores the tingle of lust that—god, just the sound of Tony’s voice sends through him. “What’s happened?”
“I’ve just got back from State. Your position has been compromised. You need to get your people and get the fuck out, now.”
“Our… position?” Steve echoes. “So you’re not— What’s your source on this?”
“You think I’m going to give you my— What the fuck does it matter, Rogers, you’re compromised! There’s a strike team on their way as we speak, and if you don’t get your star-spangled ass out of Cambodia the shit’s really going to hit the fan.”
Cambodia?
“Tony—” Steve tries.
“—enough to deal with without having to clean up your fucking messes, Rogers. If you—”
“Tony!”
“—own life, then think about the team, hell, the absolute diplomatic clusterfuck—”
“Tony, I’m not in Cambodia!”
A moment of silence.
“You’re not.”
“We’re not.”
“The intel was—”
“The intel was outdated, Tony. We left Cambodia weeks ago. Got a tip off.”
Another pause.
“Well,” Tony says, “I guess this has been a massive fucking waste of both our time. So sorry to bother you, goodnight, godspeed, best of luck with your quest to bring truth, freedom and apple pie to the world as a fugitive from international justice—how’s that working out by the way? Nope, never mind, don’t ca—”
“Tony,” Steve says, because he’s got to get him to shut up somehow before these rapid-fire hostilities cause him to completely lose his head, “I appreciate you calling tonight, I really do—”
“Oh, this’ll be good.”
The sarcasm in Tony’s voice sends it low and scraping. Steve shudders, and wraps a firm hand around the base of his cock.
“—but the reason I sent you that phone was so that we could help you. I didn’t mean to make you compromise—”
“Oh, boo-hoo, fucking cry me a river, Rogers. I got some intel, I passed it on. Don’t work this up into something it’s not.”
“I don’t want you to feel you need to jeopardize your position. We’ve already got a network in place. It’s good of you to think of us, but—”
“The noble Captain Rogers is above accepting help from a government shill, is that it?”
“Tony.”
“No, I get it. Can’t have me tarnishing your perfect image, huh? Though I’ve got to say, you haven’t needed much help with that lately.”
“Listen to me—”
“Tell me, still harboring a psychotic terrorist hitman? Or have you decided to branch out lately? Throw tea parties for war criminals—”
“For God’s sake, Stark, can’t you be quiet for one second?”
And Tony—
Tony does.
For a second, anyway.
“Oh,” he says, voice crackling down the phone line, low and dangerous, “I’m starting to think I want you to make me.”
Tony’s voice drags like fingernails down his spine. Steve shuts his eyes, but that makes it worse because all he can see is last night’s dream, Tony’s knees buckling as Steve shoves him up against the wall, only this time his eyes are bold and gleaming, and his lips part, and, “I’m starting to think I want you to make me.”
“What’s going on?”
Tony’s voice, sharp and concerned, breaks him out of his stupor, and he realizes he actually groaned aloud.
Stupid, he berates himself. Reckless, undisciplined—
But his hand is moving on his cock again, up and down, slow, steady strokes, and god but it feels good, far too good to even dream of stopping.
“What was that sound? Are you injured?”
“N-nothing’s going on,” Steve forces out, voice tight.
A sharp intake of breath. “Are you… are you on a mission? Jesus, Cap, I’m supposed to be the reckless one here. How fucking stupid can you get? Why the fuck are you answering your phone in the middle of a mission?”
“You called,” Steve says, a little helplessly, because he isn’t on a mission, but if he was? It’s not like he could leave Tony hanging, not if he might need Steve.
“I called? And what, mama Rogers taught you it’s rude to ignore a call even in the middle of a goddamn firefight?”
“I’m not in a firefight, Tony.”
“Stakeout, whatever—”
“For the love of— I’m not on a mission, Tony. I’m in bed.”
The last few words come out a little funny, a certain breathiness to them, and Steve’s praying Tony doesn’t pick up on it and—
“Well,” Tony says, in that razor-edged drawl of his. “What flattering priorities you do have, Captain.”
“I thought,” Steve says tightly, and wills himself to stop, stop before this goes completely to pieces, but Jesus, Tony’s voice— “you were in trouble. That’s why I picked up.”
Tony completely ignores him. “So the Star-Spangled Man’s finally found someone willing to give it all for America. Not that you’re much of a national icon these days, but still. Mazel tov.”
Something in Tony’s voice starts a simmer in Steve’s blood. The man is such an unrepentant ass, and yet—
He can feel his heart rate picking up, his breath getting shallow. He needs to stop this before it’s too late.
“Frankly, I’m surprised it took you this long to pop the old patriotic cherry. Anyone I know?”
Something sizzling drops down Steve’s throat and into the pit of his bowels. Is it possible—
No, it can’t be. He’s delusional—out of his head with this twisted lust. Tony Stark is an opportunist. Show him a weak spot and he’ll strike home every time.
Except there’s a little too much venom in Tony’s voice to be explained by simple opportunism. Almost as if this is personal. Almost as if Tony cares.
“You know what, don’t tell me. I’ve got a few good guesses, and I’d hate for you to tell me I’m wrong and spoil a few of my favorite fantasies—”
“There’s no one here, Tony. It’s just me.”
He knows, as soon as the words are out, that they were a mistake. He just—
Christ, but this whole thing is a mess.
He just needed Tony to know. That he wasn't taking Tony’s call while in bed with someone else.
Someone else.
Jesus.
There’s dead silence on the other end.
“Tony?” Steve says, because tonight’s all about compounding his bad decisions, apparently. Tony’s name comes out… Well, about how you’d expect, breathless and a little bit raspy. There’s no way that Tony doesn’t know exactly what Steve is doing now, and Steve should have hung up and he didn’t and now Tony will know, that Steve’s been here, talking to him and—
“Sounds like you’ve got yourself pretty worked up there, soldier.”
Steve stops breathing.
Tony’s voice is low and vibrating, pitched in such a way that it goes straight past Steve’s conscious brain and deep into the animal hindbrain, and Jesus god, but he wouldn’t have thought he could get any harder—
“Care to tell your old pal Iron Man what about?”
Steve lets out something embarrassingly like a whine. “T-tony,” he manages, “you—” His brain shorts in a pulse of pleasure and he can’t remember what he was going to say. But then, he’s given the honest answer, hasn’t he?
“Jesus, Cap.” Tony’s voice has gone suddenly hoarse.
Steve is panting audibly now. He can feel his climax coming, building in every limb, clouding the edges of his mind.
“Fuck,” says Tony, “you—” There’s a scrabbling noise and a burst of static, and then Tony’s voice, low and urgent, as if to himself: “I can’t. I can’t do this, I—”
The line goes dead.
Steve comes with the dial-tone still ringing in his ears.
The third time the phone rings, Steve’s got his hand down his pants before he’s even accepted the call.
He always knew he was a sinner.
“Where are you?”
Tony’s voice is harsh, demanding. It drags against Steve like the head of a match, all rough friction and the promise of heat. He wraps his hand around the base of his cock and gives it a warning squeeze.
“I can’t tell you that,” he says, his voice very nearly steady.
A noise of disdain. “Easy there, Carmen Sandiego, I’m not asking where in the world, because frankly, if I gave a shit, I’d have already found out. I’m asking, where are you?”
His voice drops low and deliberate on those last few words, and, oh.
Oh.
“I’m—” Steve swallows. “I’m in bed.” Then he adds, in obedience to some impulse he doesn’t bother to examine, “Tony.”
A crackle down the line drowns out what sounds like a muttered curse.
“Are you alone?” Tony demands.
“No,” Steve says, thinking of his dream, of Tony opening beneath him—Tony, half a world away, with his voice still in Steve’s ear. Then, as all noise from the other end of the line stops: “Shit. I mean, yes.”
He’s worried for a moment that it might be too late, that he might have managed to stop this before it’s even started, but then Tony is speaking again, more derisive than ever.
“Sorry, Cap, but I’m not in the mood to play Schrodinger’s fuck buddies. Are you alone, or not?”
“There’s no one else here.”
“You know, it’s funny, but I don’t remember that being on the list of options. Maybe you should have a think, call me back when you’ve figured it out. Can’t promise I’ll be there to take your call, but—”
“Will you just shut up for a moment?” Steve demands. His grip around his cock is punishingly tight, and still he can’t seem to stop thrusting into it, helpless little stuttering movements of his hips. “I’m talking to you. Okay? I’m alone in the room, but I’m talking to you. That’s all I meant.”
Silence from the other end, except for the sound of breathing, shallow and a little ragged at the edges. Then:
“What do you want from me?”
Steve goes hot and cold at once, because there’s something in Tony’s voice that sounds almost like a plea. It’s everything he’s dreamed of, and everything he never wanted to hear, because from Tony, a plea sounds a lot like defeat.
“I want,” he says, and his voice is a rasp. He licks his lips and clears his throat. There’s a kind of tingling unreality to all of this, his sensory world both narrowed and enhanced, until he’s convinced he can hear every tiny shift in Tony’s breathing, feel against his skin every subtle current of the still night air. Surely it must be a dream to be lying here, to be feeling this, to be saying these things to Tony—Tony. Only he knows he can’t be dreaming, because in his dreams Tony never speaks. “I want you to let me give you what you need.”
A sharp inhalation. Then, faintly, he hears the rustle of fabric and the slow, whispered drag of flesh against flesh.
Steve stifles a groan and begins stroking himself in earnest, hand moving in long, steady pulls.
“And what,” Tony says, and his voice is low, harsh. He sounds angry, but Steve knows better. Somewhere on the other side of the world, Tony Stark is getting off with Steve’s voice in his ear.
The thought does make him moan aloud, just a little. There’s a whispered curse, and the sound of movement on the other side of the line picks up pace.
“What is it you think I need? A good dicking to put me in my place? It’s been tried.”
The very idea of it—some nameless, faceless person trying to bow Tony down, trying to reduce him—as if anyone else has the right, as if anyone else could even dream of equaling him—sends anger spiking through him. No small part of it is directed at Tony himself, for trying to dismiss Steve like that, dismiss this—trying to lump Steve in with every cocksure idiot and one-night stand who thought they deserved to be the one to bring Tony Stark to his knees.
“Not. By. Me.” The words are a savage promise.
Tony lets out a sound halfway between a laugh and a groan. “Y-you’re one of those, huh? You think all I need is one taste of that super soldier cock—”
Steve lets out a groan of his own at the thought of taste.
“—and I’ll be meek as a l-lamb? Hate to break it to you, babe, but it’s going to take a lot more than that to shut me up.”
Steve growls his frustration into the phone, because how does Tony still not get it?
“I’m not trying,” he gets out, “to shut you up. As far as I’m concerned you can run your damn mouth until the cows come home so long as you let me do what I want.”
Tony’s gasp shudders down the line, and Steve shudders with it.
“You’re always,” he says, “f-fighting me. Always pushing, always trying for a rise.”
“Seems like I’ve got quite the rise out of you this time.” A certain breathiness undercuts the leer in Tony’s voice.
Steve ignores him. “I could be so good to you,” he says. “If you’d let me. I could be,” he sucks in a shaky breath, “so damn sweet.”
He can just picture it: smoothing back the hair from Tony’s forehead, dragging his lips down the line of Tony’s jaw. Kissing him long and slow as his fingers trailed across Tony’s chest in a feather-light caress. Tony moaning into Steve’s mouth, straining upwards to meet his touch, needing¸ and Steve— Steve would take care of him…
Tony makes a noise like ngggnnh. His words have a forced quality to them. “You, Captain Boy Scout? I never would have guessed.”
The mockery sends a spark of electricity zinging down Steve’s spine and he sits forward, shoulders hunched, working himself fast and rough.
“Or,” he says, making his voice hard, “I could fuck you through a brick wall. Is that what you want?”
The minute he says the words he regrets them, certain that he’s gone too far. This moment—this hot, dragging, impossible moment—is balanced on a knife’s edge, and any minute now he could do something to shift the balance between them and it will all be over.
Far from withdrawing, Tony lets out a sound almost like a yelp. Steve swallows it as he swallows everything Tony’s been giving him, with equal parts awe and thirst, like a man finding water in the desert.
“You like that?” he asks, half-dizzy, his voice thin and parched. “You want it?”
Tony only swears in reply.
There’s a drugging, electric quality to the air, the crackling tension between them taking on weight and barometric presence like the air before a storm.
“I’m gonna—” The words are clumsy on his tongue. “Gonna take you apart. Tony.”
Tony is breathing hard. Steve recognizes the cadence of it—has heard it from time to time in the last minutes of some particularly hard battle. It’s the sound of a man approaching his limits, a man on the ropes, fighting for nothing more than his own survival, and through and behind it he hears the faint rhythm of Tony—Jesus Christ—Tony jerking himself off to Steve’s words.
“Strip you down,” he says, squeezing his eyes together so tightly he sees stars, “take you to pieces, drive you out of your goddamn mind.”
Another curse. “Fuck.”
Steve is barely even aware of what he’s saying anymore. “Do it hard or do it slow. Maybe I’ll even let you choose but either way, I’m gonna break you down until there isn’t a thought in your head that isn’t me.”
Tony whines.
“And you,” Steve says. He can feel himself sinking into heat and haze, a fever-dream delirium of desire. “You’re going to let me. Aren’t you? You’re going to let me do it to you. All of it. Anything I want.” It’s less a promise than a prayer, a mad attempt to speak his dreams into being.
“You—” Tony rasps, and doesn’t finish. “Fuck, I’m— I’m going to—”
“I want you to.” Steve whispers it helplessly, a confession. He’s not sure he can remember wanting anything quite so much.
Tony groans his acquiescence and that’s it—that’s enough. The force of Steve’s orgasm blots out the world, sending him tumbling over the edge into hot and hungry darkness.
He comes back to himself to the sound of Tony’s breaths, quick and panting but growing steadier with each successive inhalation.
“Oh,” he says. He must have missed— Was he really that far gone? “Did you…?”
Tony lets out an ugly, barking laugh. “Oh, sure,” he says, and his voice—still gravelly, sex-rough—brings the hot flush which has just begun to fade from Steve’s cheeks back in force. “Plenty. You too from the sound of it. Nothing like a nice hate-fuck to get the old blood pumping, eh Cap?”
It’s like a sucker punch to the gut. Steve makes a small, wounded noise as all the air leaves him in a rush.
The worst of it is, he should have seen this coming.
“Tony,” he says.
Don’t do this.
He thinks he might beg if only his mouth could form the words.
“I mean,” Tony says, voice bright with a kind of manic, acid-washed cheer, “phone sex with the former Captain America. There’s something to tell the purely hypothetical grandkids.”
He realizes, dimly, that Tony’s cruelty isn’t solely for his benefit—that Tony’s trying to convince himself as much as Steve.
The thought brings him no comfort. He remembers Ultron. He knows perfectly well the sort of things Tony’s capable of when he’s scared.
“Gotta say, I think I got the better bargain on this one. I mean, sure, who doesn’t want a bit of rough and tumble with Tony Stark, but it’s not exactly an exclusive club. Whereas you…”
Tony lingers on the word, drawing the vowel out long and sweet, like it’s something worth savoring. It’s an almost virtuosic bit of nastiness. Why hit someone outright when you can bloody them with a caress?
Steve would have preferred the blow.
“You have rarity value.”
“Stop,” Steve gets out. His jaw is clenched, spare hand fisted in the bedsheet. “Stop trying to cheapen—”
He can feel the last of the warmth that lingered in the wake of his orgasm draining away. In its place, anger has begun to flicker and flare in his chest like a banked fire kindling to life. If he’d thought about it, he would have expected the transition to be jarring. Instead it feels natural, heat traded for heat.
“I’m not trying to cheapen shit. Billionaire industrialist, remember? I know my value to a T. But we’re talking basic economics here, supply and demand, and I’m just saying, I’ve never been stingy when it comes to giving out the goods. This must be the most action you’ve seen since, what, the invasion of Normandy?”
Steve swallows around the roaring in his ears. His pulse is hammering away, a quick and heavy rhythm, like boots pounding over hard terrain. He can practically feel the adrenaline spiking in his veins, and yet—
“This how you talk to your superiors at the UN?” he asks. His voice, so recently shaken with desire, is almost perfectly even. Anger has always steadied him. Maybe it’s because he knows exactly what happens next.
When someone knocks you down…
“You jealous?” Tony shoots back, quick as an adder.
…you pick yourself back up…
“Don’t worry, sweet cheeks. This I save just for you.”
…you put up your fists…
“Everything else, on the other hand…”
Brooklyn taught Steve how to take a punch. He’s learned a lot since then.
These days?
“I’ve gotta say, Tony—”
He likes to think he gives as good as he gets.
“You’re a lot of things, but I never took you for a coward.”
In the pictures, when you knock someone off their feet it all happens together, a seamless kinetic transference from fist to body, each describing half of a parabolic arc, rise and fall.
Steve’s given and received a lot of blows in his time, and he’s of the opinion that most of those bigshot Hollywood choreographers have never seen a real fight.
To give credit where credit’s due, since he started rubbing shoulders with gods and monsters, he’s seen more than a few punches like that, bodies flying through the air like baseballs cracking off a bat. But when it comes to most folks, after the blow hits there’s a moment’s pause. The body tilts and sways but doesn’t fall. Not yet. Instead it just hangs in the air, as if struggling to process what has just happened to it, to translate between two unfamiliar dialects. The vernaculars of cause and effect. The language of violence and the language of gravity.
In the caught-breath silence that follows Steve’s words, he hears more than he has in anything Tony’s said to him so far.
He pictures Tony, swaying backwards on his feet.
He pictures the fall.
He figures that’s at least one language they still have in common.
Tony’s voice is a hollowed-out rasp.
“What did you just call me?”
And it feels… good. It feels so damn good, like a furnace in his chest, glowing warm and bright. He’s missed this. He wants this, he understands this, blood in his mouth, trading blow for blow and Tony—
Steve takes a few steadying breaths and reminds himself that unlike Tony, he’s not actually aiming to wound.
He just has no intention of backing down.
“I think you heard me just fine.”
His heart is pounding in his chest. He thinks he can feel a faint buzzing just beneath his skin, as though every nerve in his body is a live-wire, charged and crackling, waiting on Tony’s reply.
Tony—
Tony laughs.
It’s a terrible feeling, for a commander, to realize you’ve miscalculated. You’ve swerved left when you should have ducked right, taken out the guy with the Uzi when you should have kept your eye on the woman in the lab coat, and all of a sudden everything is going wrong and your people are in danger and defeat a sour promise on the tongue.
“Funny story,” Tony says, and his voice sounds almost normal, “I was just running through the reasons I have for staying here and listening to your sanctimonious bull, and do you know, it’s the darnedest thing, but I couldn’t think of a single one?”
It’s the strangest sensation, like water slipping through his hands. Or not water. Something more vital than that, maybe.
Tony isn’t fighting.
Tony isn’t even retreating.
Tony is walking away.
“I—” Steve’s free hand is shaking. He clears his throat. “I think this has gotten out of hand.”
“Eh. Don’t sweat it.” Tony’s voice is easy, casual. “I said things, you said things, it’s all water under the bridge. Except, you know, in this case, the bridge is a municipally condemned burnt-out skeleton and has been since six months ago when you fucking set it on fire.”
In spite of everything, Steve feels his hackles begin to rise.
“And I suppose you’re blameless? You—”
“No,” Tony says, so savagely that it stops the words in Steve’s throat. “This? This is the part where you shut up. Whatever it is you think happened tonight? Didn’t happen.”
“That me you’re trying to convince?” Steve shoots back.
“What part of shut up don’t you understand? You don’t listen. You never fucking listen and you—”
He cuts off abruptly.
Steve’s nails bite into the flesh of his palm. He draws an unsteady breath. “Tony,” he says, “can we just—” but Tony is speaking over him.
“Here’s how this is going to work. You go about your merry vigilante ways and I’ll stay here with the adults and get on with the real work. And maybe if I hear something relevant I’ll give you a heads up and maybe not, but we are not friends. We're not colleagues. We don’t chat. We don’t have a—a relationship. Is that clear?”
There’s a prickling heat at the back of Steve’s eyes. He wants, very badly, to break something. He rubs at his cheekbone with his spare hand, the skin pulling taut, hard enough to hurt. His voice, when he speaks, is strangely hoarse, “You were the one who called me.”
A brief pause.
“Huh,” Tony says. “I guess you’ve got me there.” He exhales on a laugh, softer than before. “Another mistake to add to the list. Chalk it up there next to twenty years of weapons manufacturing, that twitter war I got into with Silvio Berlusconi, and every time I’ve ever eaten oysters.”
There’s something about the tone, the way it hovers in the space between wry and bitter—a quiet intimacy that tingles against the back of Steve’s neck like the touch of frost. It’s the sound of weapons disengaging, of battles ending and hardly fought.
Steve was the first to leave. Now Tony’s the one who’s walking away, and Steve knows with a certainty that cuts to the bone that there’s nothing he can say to stop him. Words are no longer enough, and yet words are all Steve has.
It’s just as well that he knows how this part goes too.
He shuts his eyes and lifts up his chin, jaw set, stomach clenched tight.
“Tony,” he says, “I—”
“Take care of yourself, Cap. Stay the fuck out of my life.”
And with that, Tony is gone.